Tickets moving fast for Dalai Lama

One possible reason: he doesn’t have to scramble to buy tickets to his speeches.

For the general public, tickets for the Dalai Lama’s April talks on a trio of San Diego university campuses, will go on sale 10 a.m. Wednesday. For people affiliated with the University of San Diego and San Diego State University, however, the box office opened Monday — to heavy demand.

“It’s been kind of crazy here today,” said Pamela Gray Payton, USD’s assistant vice president for public affairs. Although that campus had planned to offer most of its 4,100 tickets to the campus community Monday and Tuesday, those plans were scrubbed by mid-Monday.

“We’ve already sold out,” Payton said.

At SDSU, where the Dalai Lama will speak in the 12,000-seat Viejas Arena, some tickets for students were still available Monday evening.

UCSD has 1,500 tickets for students and 1,000 for all others; none will be sold until Wednesday morning.